If genuine, vessel up for auction in UK ought to be returned to China

A RARE Chinese bronze water vessel, believed to have been taken during the looting of Beijing's Summer Palace by the British and French forces in 1860, is to be auctioned at the Canterbury Auction Galleries in April. This has aroused outrage in China. Zhou Ya, a bronze expert with Shanghai Museum, was interviewed by Thepaper.cn:

Currently the photos of the relic, together with letters of its previous holder, UK Captain Harry Lewis Evans in the 1860s, have been published online as evidence of its authenticity, so our analysis should be based on these materials.

First, some media outlets quoted Canterbury Auction Galleries as saying the relic is a "Tiger Ying", with Ying referring to a kind of Chinese water vessel that dates back to the Western Zhou Dynasty (1027-771 BC), and saying there are only six like it in the world.

From the photos, we can judge the relic, if genuine, was indeed made during the Western Zhou Dynasty, but among scholars it is still debatable whether that kind of water vessel should be called a Ying vessel. Besides, and as far as I know, there are more than seven such pieces in the world.

Second, Evans described in his letters how the British and French military forces looted China's Summer Palace and carried away "watches, clocks, fur coats" plus silver and gold. That's solid evidence for the crime committed by him and his fellow military men, but that's insufficient in proving the so-called Tiger Ying was among the looted items.

Therefore, it is still too early to say the relic to be auctioned is a looted item from China's Summer Palace. It is even too early to call it Tiger Ying, and wrong to say only six of its kind exist in the world.

Maybe the auction house hopes to hype up the auction so that it will be sold at higher prices, but their statement is, at least, inaccurate.

Of course, if what the Canterbury Auction Galleries said is true and the relic was looted from China's Summer Palace, the auction should be considered illegal. According to the principles of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, signed in Paris in 1970, those who steal cultural relics should return them to their legal owners.